Demand Side Load Control with Smart Meters

Utility companies will seek additional electricity generation to satisfy the needs projected by increasing demands. Additional generation means investing in new power plants that will increase costs for the companies and customers. The increase in electric demand also includes increases in peak demands. Peak demands are mostly satisfied with costly and inefficient generators. In system planning for the future, given these circumstances, demand side management (DSM) needs to be given closer consideration, since it could be used to reduce peak demands. This paper proposes a DSM system using smart meters (SM) for load control. The proposed load control would reduce peak demands while not affecting the total power consumption by customers. The load control system would target appliances that consume larger amounts of power. Depending on a priority order, established by the customer, these appliances would be switched off for a period of time during the peak in demand. Additionally, customers would be able to use the Smart Meters to communicate back with the utility companies, reporting appliance use available for load control when the previous control periods are not active. This feature, our proposal, would allow a customer to switch on an appliance and decide to signal the utility company the availability for load control. The utility company could use this information and take action when system operation may require doing so.